You Xing
Born in Chengdu, China in 1989, You Xing is already a writer and director of over six short narrative films, among which BINDING PAPER(2012) has won him Best Standard award of Gulf Coast Film & Video Festival. SUMMER KNIGHT, as his feature debut, continues his endeavor to fearlessly examine mankind’s irresolvable contradictions, and to question the world with its own image.
Director's statement
Since my arrival in the U.S 10 years ago, I became increasingly aware of the multitudes of conflicts and contradictions unraveling in the world around me. Cinema is not obligated to provide answer to our human question. But cinema shall ask urgent yet difficult questions, in an exceedingly sincere manner. As I grew as a filmmaker, I started to see how we as a species habitually fend off our fear and doubts by taking refuge under the umbrella of absolutism, and how we hold onto our childish yearning for a world of black and white. As a filmmaker, I felt the acute urgency of revealing the ruthlessness in the seemingly meek. And such is the mission of SUMMER KNIGHT, a semi-autobiographic film in which an 8-year- old boy’s innocently idealistic pursuit was pitted against the power struggle and moral quandary of his family and the adult world.
